Tesla's Stepdaughters Read online

  “You have no idea what men are like, do you?”

  “I’ve seen men before, though I admit I haven’t really gotten to know one until now.”

  “Not even your father?”

  “I didn’t have a father. My mother ordered her genetic sample from the Science Council.” She stopped and stared at him, eyes and mouth wide open. “Oh shit. Oh shit.”

  “Relax. I’m thirty-five.”

  She stared uncomprehendingly.

  “I’m too young to be your father.”

  “Oh my God,” she let out the breath she had been holding and put her hand over her heart. “What a scare. I guess Ruth doesn’t have to worry about that. Penny doesn’t either, though that’s just the kind of kink she’d probably enjoy.”

  “So you want me to go out and have sex with your friends?”

  “Only if you hit it off. If you don’t click, then no problem. Unlike most women, they can afford to fly south and find their own man. And just Ruth and Penny—not Steffie. She had her own man and the bitch never once offered to share him with me. Well, all right. Maybe Steffie too. We’re kind of a package deal. You understand how the world works, don’t you? There just aren’t enough men for us not to share. You can’t just date one girl, no matter how much I would like to have you all to myself.”

  “I’m not sure I’m ready to even date. I know I’m not ready for anything more serious.”

  They landed at Candler Field on time and took an airflivver motorcade to the Biltmore. With the band members safely tucked away in their suite, Andrews met with Wright in the hotel bar. She ordered a scotch and he had a Nehi Cream Soda.

  “Chicago was fun, eh?” she asked.

  “It was fine. I’m happy to see some blue skies though.”

  “I think Loginova liked you. What was her first name?”

  “I don’t think I ever asked her.”

  “Nadia or Lydia or something like that. No time for run of the mill women when you have a rock star girlfriend?”

  “Can we just focus on our mission? Who do we need to investigate here in Atlanta?”

  “Nobody,” she replied. “There were only a couple of low level contacts here in Atlanta, and the local agents have already looked into them. We just need to keep an eye on our Ladybugs.”

  “There were other threats against Ruth De Molay that weren’t saved. My guess is that most of those originated here in southern North America.”

  “As I said, we need to keep an eye on the Ladybugs.”

  Andrews spent the rest of the evening in his room at the Biltmore, downstairs from those of the band. He made several periodic checks of the building and he spot checked the police presence, but nothing really called for his attention and he didn’t see the band at all. At eight that evening there was a knock at the door. When he answered it, he found the band’s tour manager Alexa Rothman and Janet Shaw, the stage manager.

  After inviting the two women in, Andrews took a seat across from them. Rothman was dressed in a sharp pin-striped suit with a double-breasted jacket that ballooned out because of her huge breasts. Her hair was slicked down and parted on the side, and as usual she had on her hand-drawn mustache. Janet Shaw was a pudgy woman in her late thirties with a huge mass of oily brown hair and very bushy eyebrows. She was wearing a stained sweatshirt and a pair of faded denim jeans.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” asked Andrews.

  “I’m worried about our girls,” said Rothman. “Being cooped up like this is starting to get to them. They need to be able to get out.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Shaw. “They’re rock stars. They’re supposed to party and race airflivvers and get their pictures taken doing inappropriate things.”

  “It wouldn’t be safe to just let them run around without any protection. Maybe you could schedule a week off so they could go to their island and play on the sand.”

  “We don’t have enough time during any of the tour dates, at least until we’re done with North America. Then we’ve got a month before we start Asia,” Rothman explained. “And I’m not saying they should go out without protection, but surely we have enough police coverage so that they could go out as a group or in pairs with an escort.”

  “We might be able to arrange something like that as long as it was in a relatively controlled environment. I’ll talk to my partner about it in the morning.”

  “That’s all I’m asking.”

  “Since you’re here,” said Andrews. “Let me ask you a couple of quick questions.”

  “Sure, but Agent Wright already questioned us.”

  “How long have you been the Ladybugs’ manager?”

  “I’m the tour manager. They each have their own business manager and they have a separate one for the group.”

  “That’s a lot of duplication of services.”

  “Well it has to with their history. You see their original manager was Jolette Fineman. She’s the one who found them in L.A. and turned them into the Ladybugs we know and love. After she committed suicide in ’67, they went through a string of managers, most of whom ripped them off. Then in ’69, Penny hired Erin Schlessinger to run their business affairs. Steffie and Ruth both agreed, but Piffy wanted Christine Black. That began the fighting… I can’t believe you don’t know this story.”

  “I never said I didn’t know it. So how long have you been with the group?”

  “I started with this tour, though I’ve known Piffy for years. I ran an art gallery in New York, where I sold some of her paintings.”

  “I’ve been with the Ladybugs since ‘69” Shaw volunteered. “They were trying to get out on the road in a small way back then. We did a couple of free concerts in the park, but everything fell apart before it really got going.”

  “Yes, the whole thing didn’t seem very well planned,” said Andrews, watching for her reaction. “You were the tour manager then, weren’t you?”

  “Well, yes. I’ll admit I didn’t really know anything about managing a tour, but the girls wanted somebody they knew to do it. I’m actually glad Alexa is running things now. I can focus on what’s going on onstage.”

  “You changed it up a bit in Chicago. Anything special set up for here?”

  “No, we’re doing pretty much the same show that we did at Shea. Things don’t get really interesting until the Hollywood Bowl.”

  Early the next morning Andrews was awakened by another knock at his door. He had been dreaming about hamming a nail into a two by four and it took him a moment to realize that the sound wasn’t part of his dream. Once he did, he called for the visitor to “hold on” while he climbed out of bed and looked at his alarm clock. It was just before six. He opened the door to find Ruth De Molay.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “No…” she said slowly, eyeing him. He realized he had on only his pajama pants, and he had bed hair. “Piffy said you were expecting me.”

  “Come in. Have a seat. Watch some radio-vid or something. I’ve got to get in the shower.”

  Twenty minutes later Andrews was back in the small living room area, clean, shaved, and dressed. Ruth was watching the news report on the preparations for the concert.

  “I feel more than a little weird about this…”

  “Just a minute,” said Ruth, not turning away from the news. “Oh, there I am!”

  While she was distracted with the news, Andrews went to the telephone and called to confer with his partner. A few minutes later, he returned.

  “Do you always watch yourself on radio-vid?”

  “Yeah. Kind of sick isn’t it?”

  “I guess there could be worse vices.”

  “Yes, I know. I have some of them. Anyway, what were you saying?”

  “Never mind. Your tour manager thinks you need to get out, so would you like to um… get out?”

  “What about the others? They have cabin fever too, especially Penny. I think she may actually kill someone.”

  “My partner can take care of them. Let’s start off by goi
ng for some breakfast.”

  In the elevator Andrews leaned back and examined his companion for the first time. She was wearing an ultra-short blue dress with a pair of very tall platform sandals. Her hair still shot up in little dreadlocks like a black houseplant, her blue headband adding to that impression. Her gigantic silver hoop earrings accentuated her neck, which like the rest of her body was long, thin, and graceful. Her perfect skin was a bit darker than caramel; not quite as dark as cocoa.

  They sat down in the hotel coffee shop and ordered breakfast. Andrews had a single egg, two strips of bacon, and toast. Ruth had a spicy omelet.

  “So, Piffy told me your name is John,” she said, while they were waiting for their food. “May I call you John?”

  “Of course. What else did she tell you?”

  “Oh, everything. Women tell each other everything. We talk all the time, the four of us even more so.”

  “Really? I was not aware of that.” He rubbed his chin. “I really don’t know about this. I mean about today. You seem very nice and all. I had this connection with Piffy and I was looking forward to finding out where it led. I wasn’t planning to sex my way through the entire tour company.”

  “Of course you weren’t. And maybe we won’t even like each other. But maybe we will and maybe you’ll like Penny and Steffie too. We’re all really close, closer than we were back when we were starting out. Maybe we needed a few years apart to mature. I know Penny’s already planning on moving back to Thatch Cay, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Steffie brought her boy to live with her there too at least part of the year.”

  “That’s great, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “Sure it does. Since we’re all so close, it would be much easier to have the four of us as wives rather than trying to make it work with strangers.”

  “Wives? I don’t want wives. I’m not sure I want even one wife.”

  “You told Steffie that she could be a poster child for mothering a boy. Well, for better or worse, multi-marriage is going to be the type of marriage that most women have for the foreseeable future.”

  “Polygamy. You think most women will approve of that?”

  “With one man on Earth for every two hundred fifty women? I would imagine so.”

  “Well that’s fine for women everywhere, but I don’t know that it’s for me.”

  They stopped talking while the waitress set their food on the table, then continued between bites.

  “You seem like you’re all ready to get married and aren’t too picky about to whom.”

  “I’m thirty-one next month,” said Ruth. “So I can’t afford to wait too long unless I want a vat baby, and none of us can afford to be too picky. But you are a very pretty man. And I remember how happy my parents were.”

  After breakfast, Andrews ordered a cab which drove them to a large park a short distance away. Atlanta was a beautiful city with white buildings and blue skies, a stark contrast to the smoky and black cities of the north. The city park was filled with trees and fountains, with a winding path wandering through them and eventually circling around to where it began. Just beyond the path was the playground with ten or twelve children spinning on the merry-go-round, sliding down the metal slide only to run around and back up to slide down again, or swinging in singles or pairs. Andrews watched for a moment, all the time it took to determine that all the children were girls.

  “Shall we take a stroll around?”

  Ruth nodded.

  They slowly made the circuit of the park, enjoying the sun on their skin.

  “This is kind of strange,” said Ruth.

  “What is?”

  “I haven’t seen any black faces since we arrived in Atlanta—not in the airport, not at the hotel, and not here at the park.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t, would you? In Chicago, maybe one in ten women was of African descent. Even in New York…”

  “Well, there are black people in this region, right? They didn’t all move north during the Great War?”

  “A lot of them did move, enough for historians to call it the Great Migration anyway. But yes, there should still be some here.”

  They had just about completed the circuit and were approaching the playground again, when Andrews saw two Atlanta police officers walking across the grass toward them. Placing his hand on Ruth’s lower back, he altered their course slightly toward them. Both officers were women, wearing blue uniforms with six pointed stars and leather-billed eight point caps.

  “Hold it right there, ladies,” said one of the cops, lazily laying a hand on her sidearm.

  Andrews moved his hand to Ruth’s stomach and gently moved her behind him.

  “Science Police,” he said, loudly.

  The two officers stopped, their eyes opening, though whether startled by the tone of his voice or by the statement of his affiliation, it was impossible to say.

  “Do you have some identification to that effect… um, sir?” asked the one who had spoken before in a pronounced southern accent.

  Andrews carefully withdrew his wallet from his right breast pocket, and holding it open so that both the picture ID and the badge were in clear view, he stepped toward them.

  “All right, Agent Andrews. We were just checking out a call.”

  “A call about what?”

  “A citizen reported two suspicious-looking people in the park.”

  “Suspicious-looking because they thought I was a woman dressed like a man, or because of her color?”

  The officer looked like she had something foul in her mouth. She said. “The colored women usually frequent the park on the other side of the train tracks.”

  “The other side of the tracks… how… cliché. Segregation is illegal. The Science Council outlawed it in 1963.”

  “We don’t work for your Science Council…” the other officer started, but was silenced when the first raised her hand.

  “There’s no segregation here. They just usually spend their time at the other park. You have a nice day now.” She turned and started back toward the black and white Packard beside the road. Her partner stood for just a minute, as though she wanted to say something else, then she too headed back toward the cruiser.

  Chapter Eight: Oxford

  Andrews took Ruth to lunch at a hotdog restaurant. He was becoming increasingly fond of the American fast food. He specifically asked the cab driver to take them to one “on the other side of the railroad tracks.” Sure enough, there was a thriving community of black women, and while upon cursory examination the houses and businesses looked prosperous, the streets, sidewalks, and public works were clearly not as well maintained as those in the rest of the city. They ate their hotdogs. Their encounter with the police however, had fouled both their moods and neither felt like continuing afterwards. Upon returning to the Biltmore, Ruth went to the Ladybugs’ suite, while Andrews spent the evening going through the thick file that had been put together for him in Chicago. There he found a brief notation regarding a town in Mississippi called Oxford. The next morning, he asked Agent Wright about it.

  “A woman named Pearl Kerrigan wrote a long rambling threat to the Ladybugs back in ’72,” she said, after examining the note. “It seemed serious enough at the time, so it was investigated by local police.”

  “What did they find?” he asked.

  “I don’t have any record of a resolution of any kind, but that was three years ago and the woman hasn’t been heard from since. We rated the threat level pretty low, both because of how long ago it was received and the distance from any tour venue.”

  “I have half a mind to go check it out myself, just to find out what happened.”

  “I think it’s a waste of time,” said Wright. “But if you want to requisition an airflivver, I’ll sign off on it. I don’t think both of us should leave the area though.”

  “No, that’s fine. I can handle this myself.”

  The airflivver met him on the
roof of the hotel two hours later. About as wide and tall, not including the dragonfly wings as a good sized car, and about two and a half times as long, this particular flivver was owned by a private contractor who leased it out to the government when it needed vehicles. Andrews dreaded getting into such aircraft when they were still running because of the reaction that some of the pilots had to him. This pilot, a pretty girl barely old enough to have a pilot’s license, had apparently had contact with men before. Though friendly and curious, she didn’t seem shocked to meet him.

  “Hi, I’m Deb.”

  “Agent Andrews.”

  “We’re going to Oxford?”

  “Yes, you know it?”

  “Yes indeed-oh!” She pulled back on the steering column and the vehicle shot into the air and spun around in an arc so tight that Andrews thought he would be thrown through the door.

  Airflivvers typically had an airspeed of nearly two hundred miles per hour, and this one seemed to be one of the fastest, so the flight to Oxford took just less than two hours. Along the way Andrews learned quite a bit about pilot Deb Gale, who was nothing if not communicative. She was twenty-one, had moved to Atlanta from Ohio in order to get her piloting job, lived with two friends in a small apartment, and had a long distance friendship with a young man in the enclaves named Bud that she hoped would blossom into romance.

  “I want to eventually get a job flying one of the big dirigibles, after I get enough airtime in. Right now, I’m just enjoying the adventure. You’ve got to have fun and adventure in your life while you’re young. That’s what I keep telling Bud. He’s twenty-four and he’s still afraid to move up north. Pretty soon he’ll be too old for adventure and then what will he do.”

  There was no airport in Oxford, at least not one capable of landing an airship. There was a small tarmac where four or five airflivvers parked next to a single Quonset hut. A single black and white police cruiser was waiting nearby. Once they had landed, Andrews climbed out of the passenger side. Deb secured the craft and then followed him. They were met by a single uniformed woman climbing out of the car. She was a stocky woman in her fifties, her hair shot with grey.